Warlord

'Meeting dismissed!'

* * *

The long roar of falling adobe woke the infant slung across Fatima's breast. She soothed it absently, looking back down the street of officer's billets; hers had been the last to go. Soldiers and conscript civilians surged forward even before the dust settled; mud brick has great strength in compression, almost as much as stone, but it will dissolve back into the earth it was made from under lateral stress. Townsmen shouted, dragging at lumps of clay with mattocks and shovels and picks; the Descotters tossed their lariats to be snubbed to the ends of beams, took turns around the pommels of their saddles and dragged the long baulks of pine timber back into the street, their dogs hunching and tucking their tails between their legs as they backed. Torches lit the faces of men who strained and grunted as they heaved in unison, flinging the rafters onto wagons.

It was the fourth hour past midnight; odd, she thought, for the streets to be lit like day, at an hour meant for sleep. It had often been her favorite time, catnapping between the times she fed the baby, lying quietly and listening to the breathing of the men. . odd also to be always with men, after so many years in the world of the women's quarters. She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye with her shawl.

'Why are you sad, Fatima?' Damaris Tinnisyn said, heaving a bundle up to the bed of the wagon; Kaltin Gruder's household had been next to Staenbridge's, and they were sharing the chores of moving their gear to the temple.

She stopped to look wistfully at the baby's face for a second, and the other two concubines gathered about to coo and gurgle as well. They were all a few years older than the Arab girl, pretty but harder-faced.

'He's really going to adopt him?' Zuafir said.

Fatima nodded. 'Papers already made,' she said, with satisfaction; there was a certain. . solidity to legal documents; notarized copies nestled in the money belt about her waist that Barton and Gerrin had insisted on, along with her manumission papers. 'Raj. . Messer Whitehall and his Lady stand Starparents.'

The other's envy was friendly, without the edge of hostility it might have had if she had used her good fortune to try and domineer. Governor Barholm's wife had started from far lower than they, an outright prostitute rather than an acknowledged mistress: but that was a fairy-story, a tale like Djinn from a lamp or wagons that flew and talking picture-boxes; gentlemen did not marry the girls they picked up on campaign. Fatima's good fortune meant an honorable place for life, and a nobleman's status for her son. The sort of stroke of luck they dreamed of while they scrimped and saved, for a dowry that would make a working-man overlook certain things, or enough capital to open a shop.

'Then why are you sad?' Aynett said. The wagon creaked off, and they followed: they would all be working together in the aid station, you picked up a practical knowledge of wounds and their treatment if you followed the drum. The 5th took care of its own, but expected more in return than an ability to lie on your back.

'I happy there,' Fatima said softly. 'Nobody beat me, scorn me, tell me I stupid useless imp of Shaitan; house my own.' Her head came up. 'Pray Alia-Spirit of Stars our men return safe and victorious.'

* * *

'And back two!' Jorg Menyez said, looking through the lens of the surveyor's level. The open valley where the Civil Government troops would make their stand glistened bone-white and black and orange beneath the moons.

The team of soldiers down the line of string pounded in another stake. Menyez straightened, putting his hands to his back; it was cool as the desert nights always were, and the stars had a hard brilliance. Only a winter night had that sort of clarity up in Kelden County; summer nights were softly luminous, smelling of clover and dew- damped ground. That was a rich land, rolling hills and orchards and thick oakwoods, not like this country south of the Oxheads; here the bones of the earth showed through, and the only fertility was what men had made. The desert waited, with sand to fill their canals and scorching winds, waiting for their labor and vigilance to stop.

'And we put half our efforts into killing each other,' he murmured.

'Jorg?' Raj said, looking up from his mapboard. Officers clustered around it, making quick notes on their own pads, occasionally jogging off to fix a view in their minds.

'I was thinking we should have a permanent engineering corps, the way the Colonists do,' he answered, a little ashamed of the unsoldierly thoughts.

'Hmmm, there are arguments both ways,' the commander answered. 'More flexible, our way, giving everyone the basics. Although I'm lucky you made such a study of it; too many of my cavalry commanders might as well be Squadron or Brigade nobles, not interested in anything unless they can drink it, hunt it, ride it, or fuck it. Right, here's the schematic and perspective.'

The valley ran from the northwest to the southeast, out of tumbled choppy loess hills, and into the scree and badlands that ran down to the river. Water flowed here only two months of the year, but it left a broad streak of sand winding down the middle of the depression; there was a one-in-ten slope behind toward the higher ground of the city, and a long smooth rise southwest to the low ridge a kilometer away.

'From above, like this.' Raj's finger traced a broad V with its point toward the enemy; the arms were of slightly unequal length. 'Two-point-eight clicks on the left, two-point-two on the right; that's the easier approach and I want it defiladed from the center. Right here-' his finger tapped the point of the V '-is where the command post will be, the redoubt, and where the 5th will stand. Also half the artillery, the heavy pieces from the city. Space the rest of the stuff from the walls, and all the 75's and field-howitzers, in 4-gun batteries down the wings at equal intervals, except-' he tapped the extreme right, the western anchor of the line '-I want this to have six of the howitzers, sighted in on the ravines off our flank, just in case they get cute. Also, I'm putting the bordermen in there.' Two hundred had shown up a week ago.

'Damned,' he added 'if I know why, but since I led the 5th to its notable corncobbing at El Djem, those mad bastards from the Komar hills seem to like me.

'Now, apart from the 5th, I want the cavalry battalions in a second line about fifty, sixty meters back from the first-just far enough to have a clear field of fire over the front line. Cover for the dogs just behind them. And behind all that, pile the spoil and then dig in a road, nothing elaborate, right across the arms of the V. Communications trenches between all positions.'

'That's an awful lot of digging, Whitehall,' Menyez said.

'You've got fifteen thousand soldiers and thirty thousand civilians on their way,' Raj replied. They all turned and looked upslope behind them, to the lights and ant-murmur of the road out from Sandoral. Torches lit the ridgeline, and a load of squared timbers was dumped to avalanche down towards them.

'Furthermore,' Raj continued, 'I want a staggered line of holes, about two hundred meters up the opposite slope-' he pointed '-thirty of them. Slanting upslope in the direction of our gallant wog adversaries, just enough to hold a hundred-liter urn, you know, the type they use for oil and wine around here?'

'You don't want much, do you?' Menyez laughed.

'I want victory,' Raj said flatly.

The older man looked away. 'Tell me,' he said suddenly. 'What would you do if you were Jamal, or Tewfik?'

'Stay at home under a jasmine vine, sipping kave while harem girls dropped peeled grapes in my mouth,' Raj replied promptly. There was a chuckle from the group of officers about them. 'If I had to attack now? About what they're doing; there really isn't an alternative, as long as we have Sandoral and a reasonably-sized army and they don't control the river, which they can't since we have superior riverboats. They've got better engineers, we've got better mechanics. . I'm glad it's Jamal in charge, though.'

'Why?' Gerrin asked, glancing up from a whispered consultation with Kaltin Gruder.

'Tewfik's a saber general; feint, feint, off with your head. Jamal. . I've studied his campaigns in the east, and down against the Zanj. He uses the hammer-hammer method; walk up to someone and start whipping on them with your hammer. If it breaks, you send back to stores for a bigger hammer.'

'Let's just hope he doesn't have one big enough.'

'This time, at least,' Raj said thoughtfully.

* * *

'What are you doing!'

A voice called out into the street from the window above. Antin M'lewis squinted up into a carbide lantern; the house was large, with only the one exterior window above the big brass-strapped door, the sound of tinkling